


East of the Sun, West of the Moon

by politicalmamaduck



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - East of the Sun and West of the Moon Fusion, Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel-compliant, East of the Sun and West of the Moon Elements, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 03:31:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17800286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/politicalmamaduck/pseuds/politicalmamaduck
Summary: If you told me the way, I would have sought you -- that I surely would have been allowed to do. Even if it were east of all the suns, and west of all the moons in the galaxy.Despite Galen Erso’s pragmatism, Jyn always loved fairy tales and would stay up late into the night reading furtively on an old datapad that had been her mother’s. One of her favorite tales involved a legendary creature, a white bear, sweeping a young girl away on an adventure.No white bear ever came to take Jyn on an adventure, but a man in a white cape did.





	1. Introduction

_ “The youngest daughter, who was so lovely there was no end to her loveliness.” _

* * *

 

Jyn Erso’s father never put much stock in telling children fairy tales. Galen Erso was a man of science; his only deity was cold clinicality and precision. He was a worshipper of method and dedicated to patience in waiting for the answers he sought. He valued the strength and fortitude of his own mind. Yet he was a fond and doting father, warm and loving towards his only daughter even though he spent long hours in his lab. Jyn’s mother, too, was frequently away on geological surveys, herself a beautiful believer in the Force and devoted to nature. Despite their differing views on religion, the Ersos worked well as a team, devoted to each other, their daughter, and their work. 

Although young Jyn was often left to her own devices, she was thoroughly educated. Languages, mathematics, self defense, rhetoric and grammar filled the time Jyn spent with her nanny droid while her father performed experiments with kyber crystals and lasers, and her mother studied the Force or helped her father transcribe and translate, making sense of his copious notes. Jyn did love conducting basic experiments with her father when she had the opportunity, seeing the chemicals change and react, balancing the equations, watching the crystals reflect. She also loved hearing her mother explain how the Force was in everything around them, and that if she was quiet and concentrated, she might feel it surround her. 

Jyn had a happy childhood with her parents, before the Empire’s rise. And, despite her father’s pragmatism, she always loved fairy tales and would stay up late into the night reading furtively on an old datapad that had been her mother’s. One of her favorite tales involved a legendary creature, a white bear, sweeping a young girl away on an adventure. He was a prince in disguise, bewitched by an evil queen, and the two fell in love and married after she broke the spell that had been cast upon him. The tale was old by more centuries than Jyn could count at her tender age, but she loved it nonetheless. She would have loved nothing more to see a white bear for herself one day, but they certainly did not exist in the urban sprawl of Coruscant.

No white bear ever came to take Jyn on an adventure, but a man in a white cape did. 


	2. Chapter One: South: Coruscant

_ "Will you give me your youngest daughter?" said the White Bear; "If you will, you shall be as rich as you are now poor.” _

* * *

 

 

The HoloNet was filled with news of the galaxy’s war every night. Jyn’s mother could hardly bear to see the galaxy’s beautiful worlds destroyed, and sought to shield her young daughter from the news of the Republic’s clone army clashing with the Separatist droids, lands laid bare and scorched by blaster fire. 

Planet after planet fell to the Separatists’ blockades and occupations, and planet by planet, the Republic and the Jedi fought to take them back. The droid factories churned out more and more droids each day, infinitely indistinguishable and replaceable, unlike the human clone troopers and the Jedi. There was a roster of veritable heroes whose exploits Jyn loved to watch when her mother’s back was turned. From the Hero With No Fear, to wise Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, to beautiful Aayla Secura, Jyn could rattle off the names of nearly all the valiant Jedi Knights fighting in the war with their clone platoons. It was all so thrilling to a young girl who loved fairy tales: far off planets, daring lightsaber fights, Force powers, Jedi Knights in disguise. Much like any child save perhaps the most Force sensitive, she did not remember the harrowing circumstances leading to her own birth in a Separatist prison on Vallt. Nor did she associate her father’s powerful friend Orson with rescuing them, having been a baby in her mother’s arms at the time. Instead, she remained enthralled watching the galaxy’s protectors, similar to and yet so different from her mother, and ignorant of the trauma her parents had suffered in the early days of the war. 

While the galaxy was engulfed in the conflagrations of war and the Republic gained momentum, buoyed by researchers such as her father, something closer to home for Jyn was also gaining momentum.

Jyn knew her father had been gaining much recognition with his research. She was young yet though, and did not connect her father’s long hours in his lab with the greater conflict, did not realize she too would be swept into galactic politics. 

She and her mother were in their kitchen at home, discussing what Jyn had learned that day from her tutors when they were taken away by men in black masks. Separatist terrorists had not given up on their greed, their desperation for the potential and value inherent in her father’s research. They wanted it for their own; their droids would not be enough to defeat the combined might of the Republic and the Jedi. Their support was dwindling by the day; they were never able to marshal the firepower and technical expertise necessary for a long-rumored superweapon. 

She would never forget what it felt like to have a hand pressed over her mouth to prevent her from screaming; to have her hands roughly bound behind her back; to be trapped like an exotic beast in its cage. Jyn Erso would carry that fear and anger with her for the rest of her life. She would never again be caught off guard, subject to the whims of another. She had been born in a prison on Vallt, but it had not marked her conscience or her soul; this was not the first time her parents had been at the mercy of a gaoler. Her father’s hands shook as he scribbled equations and ideas, deprived of sunlight and his beloved kyber crystals. Her mother held Jyn close and told her to trust in the Force. 

She would also never forget the man who came to their rescue, just as he had in the not so distant past Jyn did not remember; a valiant knight he might not have been, but to young Jyn, perception was reality. She had no reason to know then that her father’s old friend would become one of the Empire’s most powerful officers; that was years away yet. At the time, he was a loyal Republic officer. 

Looking back, she should have known not to trust the glint in his crystalline blue eyes; her mother certainly did not. But Jyn was but a child at the time, naive and trusting and so relieved to go home and sleep in her own bed, holding her stuffed bantha toy to her chest as she secretly read tales on her pilfered data pad. 

The ramifications of that day would have deeper reaches than she could possibly have known, but in looking back she felt powerless and helpless once more. 

Her father felt indebted to his old friend for the return of his wife and child and their rescue once again, of that there was no doubt. Which was more important to him: the feeling of indebtedness or the freedom which came from not having a benefactor for his research? 

In the end, he made the choice he felt he had to make. By the time they had fled from Coruscant and Director Krennic came calling with the might of the Empire at his back, only the illusion of a choice remained. 

Jyn watched, and waited, and remembered. Her father disappeared into the Empire’s clutches, selling his soul to the darkness, and her mother was gone, having sacrificed herself so that she could live. By the time Saw Gerrera had trained her to be a soldier, Jyn had seen--and not heard--enough. 

Jyn Erso was abandoned at the age of sixteen, disillusioned by her parents’ politics and naivety as well as the extreme version of rebellion espoused by the man who raised her. She was haunted by a man in a white cape, whose piercing eyes had seen straight through her, seen more than a seemingly normal pair of eyes should have seen.


	3. Chapter Two: North: Yavin IV

_When they had gone a great part of the way, the White Bear said: "Are you afraid?"_

_"No, that I am not," said she._

* * *

 

She did what she needed to do to survive. It was that simple. Her instincts served her well, and she put her quick wit and ability and desire to learn to good use. Good, in her eyes, because it kept her alive. Not so good in the eyes of the Empire’s loyal citizens, or their Stormtroopers, or those who put their heads down and attempted to carry on with their normal, unremarkable lives. She became an expert forger, a smuggler, and a hardened young woman.

She survived, but she cared little for her own safety.

_Reckless. Aggressive. Undisciplined._

She thought often of her father and mother, until she didn’t. She didn’t think about them the first time she was arrested and about how disappointed they would have been. Having become one with the Force, there was no help her parents were able to give her from beyond. At least that’s what Jyn told herself. She had seen her mother die; she preferred to believe her father was dead. It was easier for her that way. They would never know what had become of their only daughter, who once held the galaxy in her eyes. _Stardust_ , her father had called her, for the golden flecks in her eyes.

Jyn Erso was a petty criminal with a pretty face under which she hid her cutthroat nature until the day the Rebel Alliance freed her from the Empire’s custody.

Jyn Dawn. Liana Hallik. Tanith Ponta, Lyra Rallik, and Nari McVee. Jyn’s aliases, the people and bodies she left behind, haunted her as the ghosts of the past each night.

Forgery of Imperial documents, aggravated assault against Imperial personnel, escape from custody, resisting arrest, shipjacking, possession of unsanctioned weapons, unlawful conduct with undesirables, petty theft, creating a public nuisance, and disorderly conduct; Jyn’s list of crimes had grown with each alias, each attempt to survive, each attempt to start over and begin anew again. Her entire life she had been fighting and hiding herself, her true name and nature.

It was time for the ghosts to face the dawn, to come into the light and cast aside their shadows.

It seemed her father’s research had finally amounted to something beyond even his wildest dreams. Mutilated, twisted beyond all recognition to power a superweapon instead of renewable energy for the galaxy’s most vulnerable. The Death Star, they called it. It was a fitting moniker for a planet killer.

“A major weapons test is imminent,” the Chandrilan woman said. Mon Mothma, the former Senator. Jyn didn’t trust her. She was too clearly a politician, hiding her true thoughts and intent behind her innocent white dress. The Alderaanian princess, now, she was an interesting character, though of course not openly associated with the fledgling Rebellion. But everyone knew that she was. It was only a matter of time before either the Princess or the Empire made their move.

“We need to know how to destroy it.”

For the chance to start her life over, and to see her father again, Jyn Erso would have to sacrifice much more than the hardened facade she had created to protect herself. An orphaned child soldier, she learned how to play for sympathies in the street, escaping the Imperials more than once based on kindness from passers-by. The innocence and vulnerability which she had performed to beguile wealthy citizens, she had not kept for herself. Jyn could not remember the last time she had allowed herself the indulgence of crying, the release of any emotion. Only in her dreams of her parents and their friends was she sentimental or angry.

Orson Krennic and Saw Gerrera had much for which to answer, and Jyn Erso would see it done.

She would get the rebels their meeting with Saw. She would go free, and build her own life, a life of her own choosing. No more aliases; no more lies. She would transcend the politics that haunted her, that she claimed she ignored. She would step back into the galaxy with her own name and her own destiny in her hands for the first time since she was a child at her father’s knee.

Jyn Erso was unafraid. She hadn’t been afraid since she was sixteen years of age and abandoned, alone, unwanted.


	4. Chapter 3: East: Jedha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your patience while I finished this chapter; the bulk of the piece is here, and where it earns its Mature rating.

_“...there is no way thither. It lies east of the sun and west of the moon, and never would you find your way there."_

* * *

 

“I rebel,” Jyn Erso said, simply and succinctly as ever. Would her father have been proud? She could not say.

From Yavin IV to Jedha she went, from as idyllic as a military installation could be to a war zone.

“The strongest stars have hearts of kyber,” a blind monk told her, and she could not resist the image of her parents that appeared before her eyes, as if they were standing there with her. Her reverie was interrupted by Cassian pulling her away.

“This town is about to blow,” Cassian whispered as they hurried through the streets, and a chill went down her spine. She could feel it too; her mother would have told her to reach out with her feelings, to know where the Force was leading them, but she had known it from the moment they touched down planetside.

And blow it did: Saw’s rebels materialized almost instantaneously, wreaking the havoc for which they were known and intercepting the Empire’s latest kyber crystal shipment.

Jyn decided she liked fighting with Cassian at her back; he was quick and merciless. She darted in and out behind any structure she could, taking down Stormtroopers indiscriminately. Saw’s band took the kyber crystals and fled; Jyn didn’t have time to spare them another thought, for explosions rang across the market and chaos reigned.

She handed a sobbing child off to its mother, then she and Cassian tried to make their escape as well; she shot down several more Stormtroopers and hobbled several more with her truncheon before K-2SO arrived, sparing them from one last Stormtrooper’s grenade.

For a moment, the battle was over, allowing Jyn and Cassian to catch their breath, and then it wasn’t. Another unit of Stormtroopers appeared, but the mysterious blind monk moved faster than Jyn could have thought possible, and saved them all from ignominious capture. His name was Chirrut Îmwe, and his partner Baze Malbus was a fantastic shot.

Their moment of joy was again short lived due to the return of Saw’s rebels, whom were none too pleased despite the resounding defeat they had given the Empire. While Jyn was not forced into a cell with the others, she still had a bad feeling about what had become of her former colleagues. Taking other Rebels hostage had never been their way before.

After arguing with Saw and the long day of travel and fighting, the rush of emotion she felt when he finally showed her father’s message had the unfortunate effect of manifesting physically. She could not contain the tears that ran down her cheeks, could not stand but instead fell to her knees.

Her papa was alive.

But so was his planet killer, the Death Star.

She was wiping away the tears from her eyes when the Death Troopers marched in and started firing.

They had tracked them to the insurgents’ hideout somehow, despite the appearance that all of the troops in the area had been killed or knocked out. Saw’s group fought back valiantly; unfortunately many were killed, and everyone in the cells, including the pilot who defected and brought her father’s message, Cassian, Chirrut, and Baze, were captured and taken prisoner.

Jyn hardened her resolve when her hands were bound. She stood straight, tall and proud, her chin high, when they roughly jostled her away.

She wouldn’t go down without a fight, as she had lived her entire life. They were loaded onto a transport, blindfolded and taken off planet.

She couldn’t reach her kyber crystal, but even without its reassuring presence she had the eerie feeling she knew where they were being taken. She could feel the Imperial shuttle’s vibrations, feel the changes in gravity, the shuttle preparing for a landing platform. It was as if a shadow had passed over Jedha, an unnatural shadow that had no place dwarfing and haunting a sacred moon.

They grabbed her roughly; the Death Troopers’ distorted, robotic voices indicated they were taking the prisoners in separate directions. She wondered if they had an inkling of her father’s message, if they knew who she truly was, or if any of Saw’s rebels had survived and taken the message elsewhere.

She listened carefully, paying close attention to the sounds of Imperial regulation boots on lacquered floors, their echoes and cadences, and knew that she was being taken in an opposite direction, far away from the others. She walked with her head held high as if she could see her destination, as if she knew what they were up against.

She tried to count steps, but she had no landmarks or guideposts by which to know which hall and turn corresponded to which. Her mind processed what she could determine about the situation rapidly. The Alliance didn’t have time to change her scandocs; of that, she was certain. She was still Liana Hallik, an escaped convict from Wobani, as far as they knew for now. She had no doubt Cassian probably had a rap sheet, too. As for Baze and Chirrut, the Imperials would probably throw them into a cell just for being there. The pilot would certainly suffer for his defection.

Her journey through whichever Imperial vessel they had been taken to came to an abrupt end when they came to a doorway and roughly pushed her inside. She stumbled thanks to their force, and put her hands out to break her fall, the impact jolting the binders on her wrists and undoubtedly bruising them. The Death Troopers grabbed her and dragged her onto a chair, then left her alone to face whatever was coming, blindfolded and bound.

To her great surprise, she wasn’t left waiting as long as she expected. Isolation, starvation, sleep deprivation, torture and the like were all standard Imperial interrogation procedures. The longer a human went without interaction, the easier they were to break. It was difficult for her to determine time’s passage, but she estimated that an hour had passed when someone else entered the chamber. Their steps were lighter than the Death Troopers’; somehow, despite undoubtedly belonging to an ISB officer sent to interrogate her, the steps sounded gentle, almost hesitant.

She tensed when the being approached her. Whoever it was reached for her hands, placing one of theirs on top hers.

“No false moves,” he said, and Jyn tried not to tense, because it couldn’t be. She recognized that voice. It had haunted her dreams for years. Her mind began to race. They couldn’t possibly have sent Director Orson Krennic himself to interrogate her. Her father’s captor. Before that, their savior. One of the most powerful--and most feared--men in the Imperial hierarchy.

He undid her binders, and she instantly reached out to grab him, tried to grasp at whatever she could to somehow gain her freedom. She felt the starched cloth of an Imperial uniform before he grabbed her wrists again and kicked her feet out from beneath her, sending them both tumbling onto the floor, the chair on which she was sitting falling underneath her and undoubtedly causing more bruising.

For just a moment, until he regained his balance, she felt the pressure of his body on top of hers, and could hardly breathe. She hated the weakness in her that was unable to fight back the way she wanted, the way she knew she could. She hated how good he smelled, and that she was too shocked to try to escape from unplanned, awkward physical contact.

He pulled her up again, keeping his hands firmly on her wrists so that she could not attempt attacking him again.

“I said, no false moves,” he spat at her, practically growling, and she could almost sense the anger radiating off of him. She chose to focus on her breathing the way her mother had taught her, as if she were a Jedi meditating in the heat of battle. Indeed, the heat she felt just moments earlier had dissipated, leaving her cold and damp with sweat. She willed her heart rate to slow, to concentrate, to try to figure a way out of the situation and save her team.

“Are you going to behave or do I need to put the binders back on?” he asked, and she took a deep breath.

“Don’t put the binders back on,” she replied, nodding slightly to make him trust her.

“Fine,” he said. “I am going to let go of your wrists and remove your blindfold. I want us to be looking at each other while we discuss your little rebellion. If you put one toe out of line, however, I will have six Death Troopers and a squad of Stormtroopers here in an instant to escort you down to the detention level. And they are not as gentle as I am.”

 _Six Death Troopers_. It had to be him. She resisted a shudder and tried to consider what it meant that she wasn’t in a normal cell with the others, that he specifically mentioned the detention level.

It was a dangerous psychological game they were about to play, but she would be the victor. She had been outsmarting and outrunning Imperials since she was eight years of age.

He removed her blindfold, and she blinked as the world returned to her. She looked around at the opulent quarters, decidedly not a dark interrogation chamber, then at the man in the white cape standing before her, and knew that in order to win their deadly game, her soul would be lost. The cascade of memories that had flowed through her when she saw her father’s message did not cease their torment.

Her parents had sacrificed themselves so that she could live. If she too had to sacrifice herself, she would. But first, she would do what she had always done--survive. Krennic seemed just as handsome and charming as she remembered, despite the situation in which they had been placed. He seemed larger than life to her then, her father’s best friend, always so attentive to her family. 

“Liana Hallik,” the Director said, and a chill went down her spine. Surely, he could not know the truth. Not yet.

He looked at her, or rather through her, with piercing blue eyes, and for a moment Jyn Erso thought herself a child again, clinging to her mother’s arms in the back of a ship and dependent on a man in a white cape’s generosity to bring them home.

She was the farthest she’d ever been from her childhood fairytales when he continued, “Or should I call you Jyn Erso?”

She was a highly trained operative who had escaped the Empire before, she reminded herself,  willing her face to remain neutral. “You remember,” she found herself replying.

“How could I forget?” he asked, and she knew the game had completely changed. Her ability to talk her way out of the situation was severely diminished; she felt completely exposed, laid bare for his penetrating gaze, but he would never know that. She would never allow him the satisfaction of thinking her weak or compliant. She took care to keep her face and breathing steady and control her rapid heartbeat.

“What do you want?” she asked, raising her chin once more and facing him full on. She studied the lines near his eyes, rather than looking directly into their blue depths. She felt she could drown in his eyes and censured herself for wanting to, for wanting to take solace with someone who had known her parents, known her true self.

“What were you doing on Jedha? Not your typical low life criminal activity, and you’re supposed to be working hard labor in a chain gang on Wobani.” 

“Do you expect me to be intimidated by the fact that you’ve read my file? Send me back to Wobani for all I care. I’ve never been afraid of hard work.”

He stepped directly in front of her, his cape swirling around him. He was close, far too close. She inhaled and wet her lips.

“Prison labor on Wobani is a waste for a woman of your talents,” he practically purred at her. “You have Galen’s intelligence and Lyra’s fire.”

“Don’t talk about my parents,” she spat without consideration and regretted it instantly. Revealing her weaknesses would be her destruction. She had no doubt that this man knew intimately how to evade all of her defenses and cause her the greatest emotional devastation. At the same time, she wanted to know what he knew of them, to share memories and drop the steeled appearance she had cultivated for so long.

He reached up to move a lock of her hair behind her ear. Without thinking, she leaned in to his touch. “I loved your father,” he replied, letting his hand linger on her cheek. “I think I would have loved you, too, had I the chance. You were a precocious child; I can only imagine what you might have become.” He turned away from her, as if lost in thought. She was momentarily stunned by the absence of his touch and felt bereft. Recognizing her own weakness for physical contact for what it was, she lashed out as she always did.

“Another of your captive scientists, slaving away to have their research turned to destroy the galaxy?” She tilted her head while asking the question, inclining towards his back.

He turned back to her. “No. No, I think not.” He walked towards her once more. “That was never what I wanted, for your father or you.” 

He reached out to her once more, placing his hands gently on her upper arms and looking into her eyes.

“Things could have, should have been so different,” he said, then he let go, turning his back to her once more and running a hand through his hair. “We all could have been so happy.” His voice trailed off and his eyes were downcast.

“I think so, too,” she replied, softly. Her interrogation so far had not been what she expected, though she was still on her guard, as she always was. Whether her priority was guarding her head against her own heart or herself against him, she could not say, though she knew the truth.

He looked back at her again and nodded. “For you, especially. I meant it when I said I can only imagine what you might have become. But despite all that,” he continued, shrugging his shoulders, and crossing the room anew to once more return to her side, “you turned out to be an incredible young woman, Jyn.”

She laughed, bitterly. “I wouldn’t say getting captured by the Empire twice is incredible.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he replied, crossing his arms and intently gazing at her. She met his gaze once more, and steadfastly ignored her rapidly beating heart and the urge to fidget with her collar or her hair.

She knew perfectly well what he meant, but as she had so many other truths in her life, she would deny them until she needed them to serve a purpose. Like her true identity, or her father’s survival, the palpable tension in the Director’s private quarters was a reality Jyn would choose to examine at another time.

When she was a child, she read her fairytales and longed for an adventure, for a white bear who was secretly a handsome prince to sweep her away.

The girls and women Jyn Erso had been had many adventures. It was time for the woman she currently was to create her own destiny and liberate herself. Perhaps with the assistance of a man in a white cape, who was not a prince and would not sweep her away, but could perhaps rescue her once more.

“Where is your Death Star now?” she asked, and he laughed in response, leaning over to brush his lips against her cheek.

“I’m sure you will find out soon enough,” he breathed into her ear, and the strength of her desire for him hit her more violently and suddenly than she wished to admit. She reached out to pull him closer, not wanting to break the spell of that contact, which made her feel hot and cold all over.

She had been damned the minute she set foot aboard his ship, and both he and she knew it. Perhaps she had damned herself the moment she accepted the Alliance’s mission on Yavin IV and accepted her place in the galactic game.

She made her choice. She pulled his lips down to hers, and relaxed her rigid posture, leaning forward into him.

He wrapped his left arm around her, stroking her back, and cupped her cheek again with his right hand.

Their kiss deepened, and Jyn felt her worries melting away into a lover’s arms, a luxury she hadn’t allowed herself since she was a teenager in love for the first time.

He pulled her up and into his arms, her legs wrapped around his waist, and walked them over to his bed, not breaking their kiss as they went.

They did not speak as they undressed each other; her hands fumbled at his white cape’s clasp, and he reached up to guide her hands. He let the cape fall to the floor and pressed a kiss to both her palms, then her wrists, kissing his way back up her arms to her neck and then stood up, looking down upon her as if he were a supplicant in a temple.

She lay sprawled across his white sheets, her legs spread wide. He approached her once more, and stroked a finger down her cheek, then down her neck to her breasts, then placed his hands on her waist.

“Oh, Jyn, what to do with you?” he asked, and she knew better than to answer the question.

She could not have answered the question later, as she grasped his hair with one hand, dragging her nails down his back in vicious red lines with the other. He was deep inside her, his teeth biting at her neck, and she moaned in abandoned ecstasy, unable to care for more than the desperate desire snaking through her. She wanted him, wanted him inside her and on top of her and beneath her, to both possess him and be possessed by him, and it would never be enough. She wanted their blood on his pristine white sheets, as pure as snow and a perfect match for his crisp uniform.

Were the screams echoing through the corridors her own heart reaching out to be answered? The uncontrolled animalistic impulses in the throes of passion? Prisoners, being tortured and forced to divulge secrets both their own and others? 

Jyn could not say. She was unsure how to ascertain the true from the false in this world framed in black and white.

She had often longed for revenge. Was this then her revenge, to take her father’s betrayer for her lover under false pretenses? She had always known that sex was about power, and here, the power was hers--she was the one undoing of one of the ISB’s most powerful directors and he did not know it, or perhaps he did, and longed for the power of release, of sacrificing one’s mind to the desires of the body.

They went to sleep entwined in each other’s arms, but Jyn forced herself awake in the middle of the night, or what passed for night on an Imperial vessel.

She hated how easy it was to knock him out, then steal his datapad to plan a route to the detention level and free the others. She memorized passcodes, cell block numbers, and trooper designations should anyone question the uniform she would steal on her way. She redressed and tucked her kyber crystal back into her blouse, taking one last look at the unconscious man in the bed: her lover, her enemy, her last betrayal.

She hated that it had to end this way. In another galaxy, in another of her childhood fairytales, they would have escaped the Empire together, redeemed themselves, started a new life and lived happily ever after.

She hated herself for believing such a thing could ever be true.

Jyn Erso quietly shut the door to the Director’s quarters and walked down the hallway, head held high. Mercifully, the halls were quiet and empty for the night shift, and no one seemed to notice a young female officer out of bed.

On her way to the detention level, she turned a corner and nearly walked right into four men and a KX-series security droid.

She could have wept as Baze Malbus embraced her, calling her “little sister.”

She did not deserve it.

After asking how they escaped their cells, thanks to Kay and Bodhi’s ingenuity and experience with Imperial protocols and security systems, Jyn was silent for the remainder of their trip back to Yavin IV in a stolen Imperial cargo shuttle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this piece that I have poured my heart and soul into, particularly my beta boo Desiree for working so hard on it with me!


	5. Chapter 4: West: Scarif

_"It is I, and this is she who should have had the Prince who lives in the castle which lies east of the sun and west of the moon.”_

* * *

 

Rogue One could not have been a more fitting name for their motley, rag-tag crew that went to Scarif unapproved and unappreciated.

The planet itself was stunning, for all the horrors it held in its data archive. In another world, in another life, Jyn Erso perhaps would have enjoyed Scarif’s beaches.

The odds were against them, but as Saw had always said, “One fighter with a sharp stick and nothing to lose can take the day.” That is what she told their small unit, urging them to take the next chance, then the next, before she, Cassian, and K-2SO took their chances.

Jyn turned her head so as to not see Kay cannibalizing one of his compatriots to obtain the information they needed to get the Death Star plans. Once they mapped their route to the data vault, Cassian gave the order for the fighting to start.

She had no way of knowing how the slaughter on the beaches would progress. She did know, however, down to the depths of her bones, that her past would come back to haunt her once more before the day was done. They searched through the Empire’s interminable files, seemingly one by one, until Jyn finally recognized a name.

 _Stardust_.

There it was, in the depths of the Empire’s structural engineering documents. It could only be that one thing. She was the stardust in her papa’s eyes. Of course he would name his greatest achievement after her, and of course she would find it.

“Kay?” Cassian asked into his comlink. The droid’s voice sounded strange as he replied, “Climb,” and Jyn suddenly knew what was happening behind them without needing to see the carnage.

“You can still send the plans to the fleet. If they open the shieldgate you can broadcast from the tower. Locking the vault door now. Goodbye.”

Her grief for her father was compounded by her and Cassian’s grief for Kay as he went silent, and the vault door slammed and locked shut behind them, sealing their fates. There were tears in their eyes as Jyn blasted out the glass separating them from the data file tower.

 _Climb_ , Kay had urged them, and climb they did, once they survived the jump from the controls to the tower.

Jyn was unafraid; she knew her parents were watching from the netherworld of the Force and that the Force was with them. That momentum sustained her until she reached the blinking red dot signifying the correct data file tape, though she nearly slipped off the tower while grabbing the precious plans.

“I’ve got it!” she called triumphantly, and all seemed well, until tragedy in the form of her enemy turned lover turned enemy once more appeared flanked by two Death Troopers.

Blasterfire rang out, shadowing the data file tower and causing flashes of red and smoke to fill the air.

Cassian’s blaster bolts hit one of his marks; the first Death Trooper went tumbling down the air shaft to his death.

But then Cassian fell, oh so far to the platform beneath, and he did not respond to Jyn’s calls. She could no longer see Krennic, but she knew he was there, that he would not yield nor cease his pursuit of her.

So she climbed, and swung herself upwards and onwards until her arms ached, her breathing heavy, and she finally emerged into the sundrenched warzone of Scarif.

She staggered over to the control tower, inserted the data tape, and prayed to the Force that the planetary shield gate was open.

“Reset antenna alignment,” it said, and she swung around to see the antenna at the end of the catwalk.

She raced to reset the antenna, and faced her certain death yet again at the hands of a Death Trooper in a TIE Striker. Its laser cannons tore apart the catwalk back to the control tower, yet blessedly missed her as she attempted to dart back to safety. Somehow, she managed to cling to the fractured catwalk as it collapsed and swing herself upwards once more. She stumbled forward, then stopped.

She saw him from across the data tower, their final battlefield.

His white cape had been spotted with blood. His, or someone else’s? She could not say. Perhaps it was the blood of one of their fallen comrades. So many had fallen that day. They made ten men feel like a hundred with the might of the Alliance fleet having arrived to support them from above. The water splashing up against Scarif’s once beautiful beaches left traces of red on the white sand.

It was too late for them all, she knew. She could feel her kyber pendant pressing against her chest as if to say, _listen to the Force_. She had a bad feeling about what was about to happen.

The shield gate had fallen, but she would die for her success, surrounded by the fledgling crew that called themselves the Rebellion, hunted down by the Empire, and Krennic would die for his failure, surrounded by the Emperor’s finest, hunted down by Darth Vader and Moff Tarkin.

It was only a matter of time. The battle had been a Batonnese victory, a diversionary tactic measured in the bodies whose lives had spilled out across the sand.

“Who are you?” he had asked, though it was not so much a question as a demand.

“You know who I am,” she replied, and she meant it in more ways than one. “I’m Jyn Erso, daughter of Galen and Lyra.”

“You’ve lost,” he spat back at her, and she recognized that anger, that tightly wound coil beneath the seemingly placid Imperial facade. Orson Krennic had never played by the rules, had never conformed to the dictates of the collar and rank plaque that supplanted individual identity in the Imperial military.

Their confrontation didn’t last long; this was no mere lover’s spat, and Cassian reemerged like an avenging angel to plant a blaster bolt in Krennic’s chest.

Jyn transmitted the plans, and then lunged for her unconscious lover, but Cassian grabbed her arm. He thought she meant to kill him. She would never, could never admit the truth.

The transmission had been beamed to Princess Leia on the _Tantive IV_ , secretly docked within the Rebel command ship, and the next battle would begin, though Jyn Erso did not know it.

Jyn and Cassian limped to the elevator and down towards the sand, supporting each other, and looked toward the horizon only to find it shadowed.

The air and tides changed, as if a storm were on the horizon. But there was no storm; Jyn felt the same way she had when they were captured and taken away from Jedha. The shadow on the horizon was sinister and unnatural; the air seemed to vibrate as if in anticipation of the devastation yet to come.

 _It can’t be_ , she thought, and blinked back tears from her eyes as she looked up and her horror became reality.

The Death Star, destroyer of worlds, loomed above her.

Her last thoughts were of the man she left for dead on the data tower.

“I will see you again,” she said, knowing he could not hear her. She sunk down into the sand, holding on to Cassian for what remained of their mortal lives, and their fates were sealed.

_If you told me the way, I would have sought you -- that I surely would have been allowed to do. Even if it were east of all the suns, and west of all the moons in the galaxy._

Jyn Erso died with a smile on her lips and blood staining her fingers.

Orson Krennic died with a sneer on his lips and blood staining his cape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to those of you who came along on this journey with me! A very special thank you to my beta boo Desiree for helping me make this the best it could be. Please do leave me a comment with your thoughts, and you can come find me on Twitter, Tumblr, and Dreamwidth!

**Author's Note:**

> I originally started writing this piece in the fall of 2016, before Rogue One came out and before I read _Catalyst_. I then re-wrote sections, and left it languishing in my Google Docs until fairly recently. I'm thrilled to finally be finishing this piece after two and a half years. Chapter lengths vary and I plan to update on Fridays. 
> 
> Chapter heading quotations are taken directly from "East of the Sun, West of the Moon". 
> 
> A huge thank you to my beta boo Desirée for her edits and support as always, and to those of you who are still on the Star Destroyer Jynnic after all these years. ;)


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